


A Little about Calliopes, Midnight and Starlight and Alive as Can Be

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Homestuck, Whistles - Fandom, Whistles: the Starlight Calliope
Genre: A little angst, A little sappy, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Andrew Hussie's earlier work, Cannibalism, Clowns, Gamzee meets characters from the Starlight Calliope, Gen, I know this is a really specific interest, I think that's enough tags?, M/M, Sorry guys, Starlight Calliope Circus, a meeting of clowns, and weird speculation, but I think the ending is kind of happy?, headcanons, idek, oh man I should've tagged cannibalism, so many clowns, spoilers for Whistles and Homestuck both, there's potential anyway, this is pretty silly though, this takes place when Gamzee is taking care of Calliope and Caliborn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 04:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9862853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Gamzee is tending to his skeletal, godly wards when the world spits out Whistles, Doodlebean and Gumblin, clowns from the cannibalistic Starlight Calliope Circus in Andrew Hussie's 2007 comic book.Hm.That doesn't usually happen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, I recently read "Whistles Volume One: the Starlight Calliope," which Hussie first published way back in 2007... And decided it would be fun to have Gamzee meet clowns from the Starlight Calliope Circus, specifically Whistles. Also, one of Gamzee's character songs is called "Midnight Calliope".... And his arc has similar themes to what we've seen of Whistles's arc.... Idk. I feel like there's lots of potential for comparison and analysis here.
> 
> In short, this is pretty self-serving and specific, but... If you read, I hope you like it~! I may be getting timeline stuff tangled, and in that case I'm really sorry. I intend this to be where Gamzee is tending to Calliope and Caliborn in the first reality, before TZ and John work their magic? I hope that's like... Possible. Ahahaha.

When he’d been small, just wriggled out of his cocoon back on Alternia, it had seemed like a lot of things might happen to Gamzee Makara. 

He could’ve grown huge and fearsome, juggling heads all scabbed with blood in mirthful rainbows, rapping gory honor to his twofold messiahs.  He could’ve gotten huge and fearsome enough to ride a _one-wheel device_ , even, instead of just balancing precariously the way he used to, with his feet not even really close to touching the pedals.  He could’ve been culled because he failed to get a date, or failed to get a hate-date.  He could’ve just wandered into the sea all drifting on sopor and unable to answer basic questions like where the motherfuck his lusus got off to all of a sudden.  He might’ve found himself unable to fight off the other kids all scrambling to feed him to their giant spider lusii… Though the primal and raging chucklevoodoos in Gamzee’s deepest self told him that the whole thing _probably_ would’ve ended pretty motherfucking bad for the giant spiders.

Alternia had been full of miracles back then, and the cosmos had smiled down all full of laughing, doomed stars and even _more_ motherfucking miracles.  Still, of all the possible futures he’d conceived or dreamt of…  Vivid hopes for a paradise planet, all blood colors equal; vivid nightmares of drowning, watching ghostly highblood shipwrecks drifting closer and closer… Gamzee had never expected to end up crouched in a room he’d built to raise his own motherfucking messiahs in.  He’d never expected to be dangling long, bloody strips of raw meat over little Calliope’s skull-mouth so’s the Angel of Impossible Lives could grow big and bring the motherfucking judgment down on all things.  Set the universe right again – the Vast Honk, and whatever freshest prophesies came after.  Even in the middle of their fucked up SGRUB session, Gamzee had never expected that there, just as he was feeding Calliope that evening’s kill, was where everything weird would get way motherfucking weirder. 

And yet, that was where Gamzee happened to be, cooing something about how Calliope was a “Motherfucking sweet as fuck little messiah, cute as a skeletal button,” when the world opened up and spat out some ex-members the Starlight Calliope Circus troop.  Of course, Gamzee didn’t know that’s what they were at first.  They were just human-ish strangers, appearing in the cold grey nursery he’d put together with so much motherfucking care.  Human-ish strangers appearing all unwanted-like on his secret grey rock, hurtling through a tucked-away corner of paradox space even his moirail didn’t rightly know about by that point. 

It hadn’t been too long ago that Gamzee’s eyes had reflected back Lil Cal’s grinning blue plastic stare; it hadn’t been too long ago that his own Midnight Calliope music had played loud and consuming all through his hear ducts.  That swaying, whimsical tune had played on and on as he’d watched Equius’s last breath wheeze away, as he’d pounded Nepeta’s skull in and splattered her all over the hall – like all that motherfucking death had just been part of the dance, choreographed long ago.

So, given that Gamzee’s lost selves and holy missions were pretty fresh in his thinkpan, it’s no surprise that he considered exercising some divine subjugglation on the members of the Starlight Calliope Circus when they first met.  It was a reasonable thought.  Gamzee had seen humans before, obviously, but something told him these weren’t your run-of-the-mill humans.  They were motherfucking clowns.  Blasphemous, maybe?  Sent to stop the proper growth and inevitable ascension of Gamzee’s Mirthful Messiahs, now both held like secrets within the shared skeleton body of a grub that could barely even kill its own food, yet?  So he may’ve drawn out his blood-splattered clubs, first off, but that was before he noticed that one of the motherfucking human-ish clowns was holding an alien grub, too.  Before he really listened to what they were saying.

“Oh, thank the ancient clown texts!” the female with cheerful, dangly antennae gasped.  Her hair was slick and purple, plastic and glossy as a doll’s.  Gamzee appreciated her polka dot sleeves and leggings, though her skirt looked tight and pretty motherfucking uncomfortable.  “I thought we’d be stuck flying through that gap between the printed page and the internet forever!”

“That must just be what happens when you have to infiltrate a webcomic to escape a diabolical ringmaster, Doodlebean,” the tall, laughsassin-looking motherfucker said, gently but also kinda like he thought he knew more than pretty much any other motherfucker around.  He talked like a stilted, wind-up toy Equius, though he had a comforting hand on each of his companions’ shoulders.  His face looked like a metal mask, sealed over something motherfucking mysterious and hidden beneath.   

“Diabolical ringmaster?  Why would a ringmaster ever want to hurt clowns?  I’m so glad our dear Master isn’t like that,” said the final human-ish clown, smiling fondly down at the grub in his arms.  One of those arms was made out of a long, squeaky balloon, flexing and fidgeting just like any other arm might’ve done.  An actual miracle, Gamzee thought, that rubber would become flesh.   This third clown was wide-eyed and vacant, with hair like the strange grasses that grew on earth and a bowtie Gamzee thought would look wicked as fuck on his little Calliope/Caliborn, his prophesied tiny messiahs.  He vowed right then to alchemize them some bowties before getting his ass back to the meteor.

“But Whistles,” Doodlebean whispered, rubbing a finger along Whistles’s balloon arm so it squealed whimsically, “Sugarshoe may be the new diabolical ringmaster, but it’s not like Master Pendlecoat was ever –”

“Oh joy or joys!  We’ve found another clown!  Is this cheerful gent going to help us get back to our own beloved circus, before everything went so wrong?  What a marvelous codpiece you have there, friend!”  Whistles spoke all sing-song and merry, like everything in the world was a game and he was more than ready to play.  He waved to Gamzee with his flesh-arm, and tiny Calliope waved back, her face all splattered with blood from feeding time.  It seemed the grub propped up on Whistle’s hip had a teeny top hat growing right out of its motherfucking skull.  That there was the _shit_.

“can’t ever go back to before everything went motherfucking wrong,” Gamzee said, his voice falling naturally into soft and then screaming, now.  The voices of the twofold Messiahs, borrowed and worn like a brand.  Gamzee hadn’t been able to betray them, even knowing the ruinous truths of it all, even when it meant his own Midnight Calliope was grim and lonely and puppeted by a wicked little puppet, by a wicked little voice.  Sometimes he wondered, from deep, deep inside, whether he’d ever get his own voice back.  Whether he’d sway, and stare at the flashing lights of his Miracle Modus, and listen to Karkat rant on contentedly for hours ever again.  “THAT’S NOT HOW THE MOTHERFUCKING SHIT WORKS, BRO.  you’re running from something.  BETTER KEEP RUNNING.”

“Your assessment seems prudent, nay – wise beyond my expectations,” the aerialist clown with the metal face said.  “Tell me, is your universe the sort equipped with hiding places aplenty?  Is it easy to get lost, here within the digital world of paradox space?”

“yeah motherfucker,” said Gamzee.  “YOU SEEM PRETTY MOTHER FUCKING LOST TO ME RIGHT NOW.”

“Marvelous,” said the clown with the metal face.

And that might have been all – except that Whistles said, “Gumblin, we’ve been doggy paddling through nothingness for so, so long.  Do you suppose we could stay and trade for some of that delicious uncooked meat our new friend has, there?”

“Hm,” said Doodlebean, eyeing the dripping, gory meat suspiciously.  It had stained Gamzee’s hands red as a punchline, red as Karkat’s steaming insides.  Sometimes Gamzee wanted to talk to Karkat about his callings, about the pull in his blood and his split-in-half soul, but Karkat didn’t want to hear it.  Karkat seemed closed, and bitter, and far away, sometimes.  Gamzee might have stopped wondering how to pull him back, soon, had their world not just been interrupted and changed. 

“I suppose we _could_ use some food,” said the metal-faced clown, apparently “Gumblin.”  “Though I haven’t the foggiest idea what we could offer in trade.”

“your bowtie,” Gamzee said, pointing at Whistles with a red-smeary claw.  “AND THEN YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF SOME MOTHERFUCKING MEAT.  throw in a sleep in the motherfucking hornpile for a boonbuck.  IF YOU GOT IT.”

“A what?” Doodlebean asked, taking a stumbling step closer, eyes still on the meat. 

“nevermind, sis,” Gamzee offered.  Part of him remembered wanting to bake pies for his friends, to sit them around and talk and eat and become better bros with all of them.  Part of him remembered wanting to care for Tavros, pushing him around in that wheelchair and listening to his fairytales.  He did some of that hoping for a kiss, of course, but not _all_ of it.  Part of Gamzee remembered that he hadn’t always felt so alone and worthless whenever he wasn’t carrying out his divine purposes… Whenever he wasn’t dancing along to the will of that puppet.      

That must’ve been the part of Gamzee that laid out a motherfucking picnic blanket, and listened to the ex-Starlight Calliope clowns tell their story.

If Lil Cal had managed to kill that side of Gamzee earlier, squashing it down like Aranea tried to do to his motherfucking voice, in some universes, everything else that followed would’ve gone way, way differently.  Karkat probably wouldn’t have ended up dueling Sugarshoe with battle-equipped Fancy Santas on a tightrope, for instance.  The infamous Jack Noir probably wouldn’t have been captured by Starlight Calliope lion tamers and used in a particularly spectacular act before discovering he loved everything about show biz.  The fiendish, metal roots of the Starlight Calliope Circus would surely _not_ have wound their way deep within the brand new and innocent Earth C, had the three exiled, exhausted clowns not slept a weary day through on Gamzee’s horn pile.  At least…  _Probably_ not. 

Gamzee certainly wouldn’t have been able to take a good hard look at Whistles, there, offering a pacifier to a mysterious grub incarnation of the same Ringmaster Phineas Pendlecoat that had apparently feasted regularly on slaughtered clown-flesh.  Motherfucking sick, eating up your own family like that.  But Whistles had cut off his arm for Pendlecoat, not knowing a new balloon-ish one would sprout back with giggling clown magic.  Whistles had killed, Gumblin whispered, Whistles had killed hundreds to keep Pendlecoat safe.  And the motherfucker would’ve eaten him.  The motherfucker _tried_.

If Gamzee hadn’t played “Go Fish” and charades with clowns from a papery, mystic comic book dimension, he might not have ever been able to look at himself with Whistles in mind.  It was like looking in a funhouse mirror – he was there, he was not there, he was screaming and he was smiling so, so wide.  Would Gamzee have let himself be eaten by his gods?

Had it already happened? 

When the calliope music started up again, for Gamzee, would it be time to laugh or cry, to sing or scream?  Would it be time for both, and all? 

Yes, it was hard to say what might have happened, had the universe decided _not_ to spit Whistles, Gumblin, Doodlebean and that wriggling human grub of a monster ringmaster out into the Messiahs’ nursery. 

Gamzee wouldn’t have lost charades to Doodlebean three times in a row, it would be fair to say.  He also might not have taken Karkat to the Messiahs’ nursery-base the way he did… First to meet these strangers in need and then just to _show him everything_ , stumbling a little, eyes wide and vacant like Whistles’s own.  He might not have melted onto the floor, fake god tier wings squashed and snapping against the wall behind him, reaching for his own original voice over and over only to find it wasn’t there.  It had been eaten, at least for a while.  He had offered it up to be eaten, like Whistles had offered up his arm – with a smile, with a prayer.  Karkat might not have held Gamzee so close, then, and listened, saying, “I THINK I GET IT NOW, YOU ASSHOLE.  LOYALTY ISN’T AN ALTOGETHER BAD QUALITY IN A TROLL,” or maybe, “YOU CAN STOP CRYING ANY DAY NOW.  IT’S OKAY.  I’VE GOT YOU.” 

And Calliope might’ve had to wait a while longer for her swanky bow tie, too. 


End file.
